


all the time in the world

by lameafpun



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mild Comfort, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:48:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25417195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lameafpun/pseuds/lameafpun
Summary: It’s not over but they’re rebuilding, however slowly. It’s steady, which is more than she can say about the other places she stayed at over the years.Savannah is on the horizon and Clementine doesn’t let herself think about it too much until she’s stepped foot into the city and suddenly it’s all she can think about.
Relationships: Clementine & Lee Everett
Comments: 6
Kudos: 17





	all the time in the world

There is decidedly less color left in her hair when she steps foot into Savannah again. It has changed — as much as she had. The buildings that were already in disrepair have been beaten down by years of hot, humid weather, left to crumble and fall back into nature. Naked girders frame the horizon like skeletons in a great metropolitan graveyard, though the greenery breaking through the pavement and climbing up the sides of abandoned cars and homes makes it all softer, somehow. Distant. Something Clem would take a picture of, if not for the rotted underside evidence by the low groans, hisses, and the sounds of aimless shuffling across broken glass blanket the city.

She taps the gun in the holster at her hip, surveying the empty streets with a practiced eye as she passes them by. A checklist scrolls by in her mind’s eye. Her hatchet is secured to her backpack. There’s a good amount of bullets at her disposal. Escape is possible from at least three different ways as she sweeps down the street; she’ll be okay.

Small corner stores with apartments stacks on top gradually blend into larger city blocks with bigger, fancier storefronts with awnings and areas that were most likely dedicated to outdoor seating. Larger streets, too, with the occasional pile of bodies that writhe and rot and snarl aimlessly. Weakly. Her hatchet leaves a grisly trail of gray matter against the concrete.

Deja vu hits as she stands in the middle of that street, eyes glazing partly over as memories of being smaller and covered in congealed gore wash over her, protected by a hatchet similar to hers as it butchered its way to a jewelry store. The memory is awash with sweat and muck and gross but she can remember the feeling of safety that wraps around her like a warm hug. Like a “sweetpea” she can hear in her chest, a steady heartbeat thumping away beneath her head.

She blinks, and it drifts away on the warm summer wind, a whisper in the back of her mind. Her feet follow oddly pointed bricks, anchored by familiar storefronts and the sight of a garish yellow sign reading “Eose’s Jewelry.” It’s half covered by a tree branch but she can recognize it all the same.

Hatchet tucked away, she hooks her fingers underneath the roller shutters and heaves. Cracks erupt from her back but the door gives with a weak series of creaks. She shimmies through easily.

As she straightens the low tell tale noises of a walker trickles back to her. Her inhale hiccups halfway through. She swallows before turning, picking her way through the glass and past the necklaces that have long lost their shimmer, to the back end of the store. For all her years, her gaze does not lift from the floor.

She runs a hand though her hair, hacked chin length and kept in place with two rainbow striped bands that Violet insists was just what was left when she went scavenging in that department store.

Every exhale turns into an attempt to clear her throat that is less successful than she would have liked. Nothing that enters her mind seems appropriate or right. It’s all a mess of words and references to people that have been dead and gone longer than she had known them, a eulogy to the ghosts of memories she thought she’d outgrown.

One last time.

Slowly, her hands steady at her sides. She lifts her head and fixes her gaze on the rusted radiator.

“Hi Lee.”

The handcuff rattle like a macabre wind chime as his arm jerks and forcefully pulls against it. Her eyes stray from the cuffs.

“I kept my hair short.”

Cool metal underneath her fingertips keeps her centered as the edges of the shop melt into a newer looking interior, the chaotic pounding of a mob at the shutters making her shoulders hunch. Everything is taller, and bigger, but she is smarter and the gun she’s practiced with is clutched in a death grip. The doorway looms before her, casting shadows and for all she knows that she is smart she’s never been this alone. She looks over her shoulder and the second she does she knows it’s a mistake. The warmth is gone, leaving something cold and sick and dead. In its eyes is the same empty, milky gaze and she hates it for using someone so familiar.

With a breath she’s back and standing on her feet, staring into eyes that have sunken so far back into the skull they’re practically holes. All that’s left is the vaguely familiar shape of his face, kept in place by whatever mystical, biological horrors that keep the walkers mobile. There’s not much left there, not for her, and decades worth of emotions that has been buried underneath the necessity of eking out survival from this wasteland creeps up around her neck. Clem knows she shouldn’t let it, has lived years doing so, but she can feel it swallow her now that she’s had a chance to breathe.

There’s only enough of her left to say goodbye.

She sits. She talks, and lets the exhaustion seep through.His voice rumbles in her mind and she isn’t sure if it really sounded that way or if his imagined responses are things he’d really say. All that remains is the rumble and the way he always sounded so sure and safe. Her vision blurs and it’s enough for the outline of him to fill out, fuzzy as it is, and even as it reaches for her she can imagine him stretching out a hand to muss her hair. Though her cap is more patch than hat, when she lifts it off her head and closes her eyes it’s as whole as the day she got it.

She stands, and unholsters the gun at her hip. It slides out, a process made smooth by years of routine, and she levels it. Her hand does not shake. Not this time.

When she leaves that store for the second and final time the sun is high in the sky and she can feel its warmth on her face.


End file.
